I have been told I don't know what biological sex means. It's funny how that phrase comes up when it suits a point, but doesn't count when talking about a male body dominating the shit out of some teenage girls.
Funny Events of the "Woke" world
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
- Start date
Yes yes, you're doing a wonderful job of sticking it to those evil trans people for existing.
Do you not question that someone is taking advantage of claiming trans, to feed into the dire need for a competitive advantage, or to manipulate the situation to get away with things not others would not be able to? You believe anyone and everyone who says they're trans 100% and never think anyone is trying to capitalize on something?
Let me put it this way. I'd much rather err on someone claiming to be trans for...whatever agenda they could have to open themselves up to all the stigma of being trans causes than accuse someone who is trans of faking it for attention. Of course, I may be a bit biased, as I'm currently going through a bit of a "what the hell gender am I" stage, so to be told that I should be doubted because I might be faking it to manipulate others is a bit skeevy, to me.
I also notice that it's always men "pretending to be" women that comes up with transphobics. Apparently, people like Chaz Bono don't exist.
I also notice that it's always men "pretending to be" women that comes up with transphobics. Apparently, people like Chaz Bono don't exist.
It comes up when it's relevant. It's relevant here, because the bit about you being able to have an abortion wouldn't make sense unless you had a female biological body with a functional uterus.
I don't know what on earth you're talking about regarding people with male bodies dominating teenage girls. Is it a reference to the discredited stereotype about trans people getting into female spaces to abuse people?
No it was a swimmer reference...and a wrestler reference...and an MMA reference....and a cycling reference....and a weightlifting reference.
Doesn't matter. I'm not arguing about that anymore.
That is fair enough, but here's my problem:
It's not that I don't grasp the intended themes, it's that I don't think the themes work in this context. I know that Johnson was saying that Luke had gone fatalist and assumed the worst about the Skywalker and Jedi fates, but I disagree that that is a conclusion that Luke would reach after one failure, however tragic it may have been.
More importantly, however, I feel the decision to go that route ends up disrespecting the character and the storytelling predating the Sequels. By all indications, Luke tried to reestablish the Jedi Order once and then declared it a lost cause when things went sideways, which is genuinely out of character for him. Did he flee the battle of Hoth once his gunner died or snowspeeder got shot down? Did he stop training in the Force when he failed to lift his X-wing? Did he go full hermit and cut ties with everyone when he realized that Vader was targeting the people he cared about to lure him out? Did he put up his lightsaber for good after he lost his hand to Vader, much less learned of their connection? Did he assume that it was pointless to defy Palpatine when he revealed that the attack on the Death Star was giddily skipping right into his trap? Did he accept the Emperor's logic that he was destined for the Dark Side when his rage got the better of him (several times) in the Emperor's Throne room and he nearly killed his father? No. In each case he accepts what happened and moves on rather than assumed that it had fatalistic implications.
So it's jarring to see that - sometime during the time skip - Luke responded to the loss of his fledgling order by insisting that this was just the way things were, the way things were always going to be, and therefore was better not to even try than to be met with its inevitable (because it managed to happen twice, once under him) failure. That is bizarrely out of place for Luke, much less a post-protagonist Luke.
And I get that Johnson was trying to tell a story about Luke rediscovering his hope for the Jedi, but Luke's entire narrative role in the OT was to be that very hope. The very title "Return of the Jedi" refers to him and acts as a final bow for the trilogy. The Empire is falling and the Jedi are back. To then just skip over the efforts to reestablish the Jedi Order and go "yeah, Luke tried, failed, and gave up on that years ago, so he's the last Jedi again" is a narrative slap in the face that tries to reset the status quo to how it was before the final bow rather than accepting and elaborating on the way that the status quo was changed by it.
As a final point on this, it's not an expectation of infallibility. It's a matter of inconsistency and working with the source material. Imagine for a minute that I got the reins to make a follow-up for Avatar the Last Airbender (for simplicity, assume that this happened instead of Legend of Korra). Think about how that story ended. Now imagine that when my series picks up, decades have passed, the "Phoenix King Reborn" is picking up steam and on the cusp of reigniting the old war...and Katara tells our young protagonist that she and Aang broke up years ago after the death of their firstborn to the Phoenix King's forces, and that he had been in hiding for nearly as long. Our protagonist ultimately finds him at the Central Air Temple...having given up on both reestablishing the Air Nomads and believes it would be better if the Avatar cycle ended, as the Phoenix King proved that he'd failed to end the war.
Is that a potentially interesting angle? Yes. Does that respect the established character of Aang or the orignal Last Airbender source material? Hell no, and the story I'm brushing over is certainly not the material that belongs in a time skip.
By its very nature, the events covered in a time skip are supposed to be those that you can reasonably fill in the gaps for. The idea can basically be summed up as the timeskip being an "autopilot period". While he presumably had more adventures in the intervening years, it doesn't take much imagination to trace how Justice League's Batman becomes Batman Beyond's Bruce Wayne. That Bruce feels like a natural continuation of JL's Batman, with the main oddity being why he's so alone, but even that feels reasonable. Similarly, General Organa feels like a natural evolution of Princess Leia. In Jumanji, when you see what happened to Alan and Sarah after the prologue, Alan feels like the natural result of a kid who spent decades living alone in a killer jungle, while Sarah feels like the natural result of a kid who ran out in hysterics (claiming to have been chased by non-native bats) that claimed to have seen a game board eat the boy who disappeared. In X-Men (2000 film), the prologue gives us most of the information we need to infer how Eric (a holocaust survivor) would become Magneto (who is once again seeing his people - mutants this time - being systematically scapegoated and targeted in an uncomfortably familiar way).
As a general rule, the trajectory a character followed during a time skip should be easy to trace considering Points A (how they acted pre-time skip) and B (where they were at the start of the time skip), and Point C (where they pick up again). If you have to introduce significant developments during the time skip to justify a swerve in trajectory between B and C, that's a pretty good indication that that shouldn't be an event that occurs during the time skip, lest it feels like you're just unwilling to work with the character you were given.
Good, because you managed to exclusively make references to people who aren't dominating squat
This is the same logic that no victims should ever be believed because there are some outlying cases where people faked it for personal gain. More all-or-nothing thinking.
My boss was at a party a few months back and someone said Karen and he said all the women acted like they just said the C-word.
Funny how with Roe v Wade discussion, everyone seems to magically know what a woman is now, women's rights and all. But a mere couple months ago, a supreme court candidate couldn't define what a woman is...
Correction: a SC candidate declined to humor Marsha Blackburn's anti-trans grandstanding. Take your anti-queer bigotry elsewhere.
One can also take the view that Luke bust a gut bringing down the Empire, and thinks he can recreate the Jedi Order and all be well. Then it goes pear-shaped, and you can imagine him thinking "Gee, Empire Mk II, some poor schmuck has to go through what I did. This Jedi stuff is a bust."
Where I do agree is that it's very hard to see Luke walking off into the sunset leaving a rogue Jedi/Sith free to cause havoc. Although maybe, it being his nephew, he also recognised he was unwilling to do what needed to be done.
How did Luke ever get this reputation as a great Jedi? He was barely trained. Ahsoka on her worst day would be a more skilled Jedi than Luke on his best day because she was constantly and consistently taught. Like it seems weird to me that Luke is lionised as a Jedi when in reality he should be lionised as - much like his dad - one the greatest Starfighter pilots in the galaxy.
As Rey would demonstrate, being a great Jedi is being born to the right family and inheriting the right amount of midichlorians. Fuck that training shit.
I dunno if I'd even go *that* far. He was passable in one fight and made a miracle shot with the force, but he was only in two vehicle fights and got shot down early in the second one on Hoth. Though that fits on the whole "legend far outstripping actual ability" thing TLJ was going for
Well that's what happens I guess when you don't have at least an active outline for what you're doing.
Although the hilarious thing about it all to me is that so far one thing people have on this website been praising about Dr. Strange 2 is that it feels like Sam Raimi made it, banging on that Marvel should just let their directors make the movies. Well as far as I can tell that's kind of what Disney did with the first two Star Wars movies, they let the chosen directors make their movies. I guess its only 'meddling' when they make a movie you don't like.
Well sure but even, like, by itself as a standalone movie it has exactly one redeeming quality, and it's that single scene of the festival on the desert planet before any plot happens there.
Like, glaring example: JJ hypes up a "Force diad" thing all movie, so what happens when the climactic showdown happens? Does the fated pair team up to defeat the big bag evil guy? Absolutely not, one of them gets chucked in a hole and the other one gets a solo win due to bigger numbers.
I mean sure, it's unexpected. Mostly because it's dumb as shit.
Thing is, not all failures are equal, and by that paragraph, you're putting them all on the same level. Luke being shot down, or failing to lift his X-wing (which he does give up on, technically, Yoda's the one who raises it) aren't on the same level as, say, Luke failing to defeat Vader in Cloud City. And there's a key difference between those failures, and Luke's failure with his own nephew. Not only does he fail to save Ben, Ben's the one who he insisted be trained. He makes the decision to restart the Jedi, and yet, history repeats itself. The Skywalker bloodline seems cursed, a new Empire is forming, he's lost his nephew, etc.
I'm sympathetic to that argument. One can reasonably question the leap from Ep. 6 (the Jedi have returned) to Ep. 8 (guess we're back to only having one Jedi in the galaxy). However, if we're talking about redundancies and resetting the status quo, that's more on TFA than Last Jedi. TFA is the one that gives us the not!Empire, who destroys the Republic (a Republic that we've never seen), so we can have the Empire (sorry, First Order) fight the Rebels (sorry, Resistance) again. Last Jedi actually does something with the conciet that the galaxy seems to be in a never-ending cycle of light and dark, whereas TFA gives us a single line in reference to this.
If TFA wasn't so derivative, I'd be more sympathetic to the notion of Last Jedi 'betraying' the end of Ep. 6, but TFA, I'd argue, already does that. Rise sure as hell does that, bringing Palpy back with nary an explanation. Last Jedi at least brings some thematic weight to it, whereas Palpy in Ep. 9 not only betrays Ep. 6, I'd argue it also betrays him in Ep. 3 as well (oh so NOW lightning harms you!)
Well, thing is, I don't really have a problem with that. I'm a bit wary of it being the Fire Nation again (in this scenario, I'd choose the Earth Kingdom - have the world be stuck in a state of war), but aside from that, no, I don't really have an issue with it. There's of course a leap from Aang at the end of Book 3 to how he is there, but a lot can change in three decades. There'd be similar outrage, but I could see that story working really well, and maybe have the setting's tenents question (should the Avatar Cycle end? Is having an Avatar a good thing? Is relying on the Avatar maybe hindering everyday people's abilities to get shit done?) I mean, there's 10,000 years of Avatars, I'd love to see that kind of story with a prior one.
Well, again, not all those character trajectories are identical. Bruce gets a line from Justice League to Batman Beyond, while the arcs of the Jumanji characters happen entirely in one film, while in X-Men 2000, this is the first time we see Magneto at all - any past trajectory occurs off-screen.
I mean, if we're talking about Bruce Wayne, and trajectories, and giving up hope, I can point to BvS Bruce, who's fought crime in Gotham for decades, and by this point, has given into despair, has allowed himself to become more vicious, etc. I think Last Jedi does it better, but one can easily draw parallels in concept.
Okay, fair enough, but I disagree that we're missing much. Not every part of a character's life has to be depicted, and Last Jedi does show us via flashback what happened. It actually shows us three times, really. You could, perhaps, have a hypothetical movie that depicts everything Last Jedi deals with in flashback, but I disagree that it's required. How Luke fell is documented in the film itself. And while I agree that not all time skips are equal, the Star Wars movies have always had time skips, often between movies (there's a ten year gap between Ep. 1 and 2 for instance, do we need to see Anakin's training there? Do we need to see the three year gap between Hope and Empire, explaining how Luke's abilities improve to the point that he can use telekinesis?)